A hay baler or a baler for other crop materials generally comprises a vehicle structure or housing movable in a direction of advance along a swath of mown crop material which has previously been raked or tedded to form hay or which may be displaced across a field to pick up crop material such as straw discharged from a reaper, combine or the like.
Conventional hay balers may have a press channel extending in the direction of travel of the vehicle and provided with a ram or plunger adapted to compact crop material feed in this channel into a bale of a standard size. When the compacted material has reached this size, needles or other tying means knot a twine or wire about the compacted mass to form the bale which, as a further mass of crop material is advanced through the press channel, is ejected in the rearward discharge end of the channel. SInce the ram and tying mechanism operate substantially periodically or intermittently, a transverse-feed mechanism may be provided to introduce crop material into a lateral opening of the baling channel in a retracted position of the ram. After this mechanism has moved out of the path of the ram, the latter becomes effective to compact the freshly introduced crop material against the previously formed bale. The transverse-feed mechanism thus operates synchronously with, but in phase-shifted relationship to, the press ram and both may be provided with a common drive.
The transverse-feed mechanism may include a trough or the like extending transversely of the press channel and, therefore, generally transverse to the direction of movement of the baler travel direction and may be provided with a feed fork or the like describing an elliptical or kidney-shaped motion whereby the fork sweeps close to the bottom of the trough in the direction of the press channel, elevates its tined at the end of their travel ends to lift the crop material into the press channel through the aforementioned lateral opening and then retracts rearwardly at some distance above the floor of the trough so that crop material can continuously feed into the trough during the feed and return strokes of the mechanism.